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Cultural Memories of the Expulsion of the Moriscos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2008

José M. González García
José M. González García*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Filosofía, CSIC, Madrid, Spain
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Violins are weeping over the Arabs leaving al-Andalus,

Violins are weeping over lost time which will never come back

(Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish1)

In 2009 it will have been 400 years since Philip III expelled the Moriscos from Spain. It is therefore time to consider what remains of this tragedy in present-day Spanish collective memory. As opposed to the history as written by the victors it is necessary to also listen to the voice of the descendants of the victims, recovering their own historical memory. As a symbol of the reparation of an historical injustice the present-day Spanish state may grant the descendants of the expelled Moriscos the right to Spanish citizenship, as has already happened with the descendants of the Sephardim or Spanish Jews. In this article I consider four forms of memory of the expulsion of the Moriscos, embodied respectively in History, Literature, Art and Popular Culture. In the section on History, I analyze the works of Gregorio Marañón and Henry Kamen. Literary memory will be represented by the figure of the Morisco Ricote in Part II of Cervantes’ Quixote. For Art, I will look at a series of paintings commissioned by Philip III and at a painting competition held in Madrid under Philip IV. Popular culture is represented by the celebrations of ‘moros y cristianos,’ or ‘Moors and Christians,’ an old tradition that is still alive.

Type
Focus: al-Andalus – the Three Cultures
Information
European Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 91 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2008

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References

[1.] Quoted in H. Kamen (2007) The Disinherited. The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (London: Allen Lane), p. 53 and in S. N. Beckwith (2000) Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain (New York: Garland), p. 284.Google Scholar
[2.]Bloom, H. (2002) Foreword toM.R. Menocal, Ornament of the World. How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Back Bay Books), pp. xiii–xiv.Google Scholar
[3.]Marañón, G. (2004) Expulsión y diáspora de los moriscos españoles (Madrid: Taurus), p. 90.Google Scholar
[4.]Kamen, H. (2007) The Disinherited. The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (London: Allen Lane), p. 60.Google Scholar
[5.]Kamen, H. (2007) The Disinherited. The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (London: Allen Lane), p. 73.Google Scholar
[6.]de Cervantes, M. (1953) The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated by S. Putnam (London: Cassel), vol. II, p. 864.Google Scholar
[7.] See A. Castro’s interpretation, especially in his 1967 book Hacia Cervantes (Madrid, Taurus).Google Scholar
[8.]Cf. the Catalogue of the exhibition (1997) La expulsión de los moriscos del Reino de Valencia (Fundación Bancaixa: Valencia), with good studies about the history and the picture collection.Google Scholar
[9.] Cf. M. Scholz-Hänsel (1998) Bildpropaganda gegen die Anderen. Spanische Kunst im europäischen Kontext der Toleranzdiskussion des Westfälischen Friedens. In K. Bussmann and H. Schilling (eds) 1648. Krieg und Frieden in Europa (Münster/Osnabrück), pp. 131–139.Google Scholar
[10.]Flores Arroyuelo, F. J. (2003) De la aventura al teatro y la fiesta. Moros y cristianos (Murcia: Nausícaä), p. 266.Google Scholar